Why Facebook Pixel doesn't track URLs when embedded in iframe? - facebook

I've noticed that when FB pixel is embedded into a standard web page, it works correctly.
This is the call it does:
https://www.facebook.com/tr/?id=PIXEL_ID&ev=PageView&
dl=https%3A%2F%2Fautotarget.co%2Fauto%2Faudi%2Fa6%2Fpr%2Femilia-romagna%2F-8-%2F48%2F&rl=&if=false&ts=1464110706891&v=2.5.0&pv=visible
And i see the url on the Audicence panel on Business Manager.
The problem is when the FB pixel is embedded on iframes. It seems it doesn't track the iframe URL.
This is the call it does:
https://www.facebook.com/tr/?id=PIXEL_ID&ev=PageView&
dl=https%3A%2F%2Fautotarget.co%2Fauto%2Faudi%2Fa6%2Fpr%2Femilia-romagna%2F-8-%2F48%2Fthankyou-call%2F&
rl=https%3A%2F%2Fautotarget.co%2Fauto%2Faudi%2Fa6%2Fpr%2Femilia-romagna%2F-8-%2F48%2F&
if=true&ts=1464107424477&v=2.5.0&pv=visible
In this case dl parameter is the right URL, rl parameter is the URL of the page embedding the iframe.
Could you please help us?

Related

What restrictions are there on the Facebook Social Plugin integration?

I'm using the Page plugin feature in order to generate a rendered facebook events feed for a XAML application I'm working on.
https://developers.facebook.com/docs/plugins/page-plugin
On the page, it gives you the option to put in a facebook link, and it will then render a timeline or events page in which you can grab HTML code from. I am taking the Iframe code and harvesting the URL, then having it render within a webview in XAML. The issue I am running into is that facebook won't render the page I need. This prevents me from getting the URL out of the Iframe.
Does anyone know what sort of restrictions facebook places on rendering page plugins?

is it possible to share whole Fb app Canvas page through app?

I'm working on a photo contest fb app to run in a fan page tab. the user should be able to share the photo in order for others to vote for them.
supposing image link in iframe is http://example.com/image.php?id=1 for particular photo, pressing share will share this link through iframe. which leads up to the host app itself.
what I need is sharing the whole fb app tab page url with http://example.com/image.php?id=1 open in its Iframe.
is that possible in any way?
thanks for help.
So to give the “alternative” to #Lix’ answer, which focuses on canvas apps, here the analog way for page tab apps:
For some reason Facebook decided to do things differently for page tab apps – different than with canvas apps, you can not pass just any GET parameters to your app by appending them to the facebook.com address of your app, but you have to use the app_data parameter for that.
You call/link to your app in the form https://www.facebook.com/YourPage?v=app_1234567890&app_data=foo – and whatever you put as value for the parameter app_data, you will find in the signed_request parameter that Facebook POSTs to your app on initial(!) load into the iframe.
So you parse the signed_request (or let f.e. the PHP SDK do that for you), and then you find the app_data value in there. If you want to pass more than one single value, you can f.e. also put JSON-encoded data there – then you have to decode that again after you read the app_data value from the signed request.
The docs just shortly mention the app_data parameter, but the principle itself is quite simple.
Now, when it comes to sharing those links, I found that when you use an address in the above form, Facebook tends to cut the parameters from the URL, and treat the whole link as just a link to your Facebook page – it shows the page’s picture and description, and does not even pass your page tab app along, let alone the app_data parameter.
I found the most reliable way around this is not to link to your page tab on Facebook directly, but instead to a URL of your own app. When the scraper visits it, you deliver the relevant OG information. And when it’s a real user visiting, you redirect them to your page tab app, passing the data you need via the app_data parameter as described above. Redirecting can either be done server-side (info on how to detect the scraper server-side via its User-Agent header), or client-side via JavaScript (which the scraper does not “speak”).
Sure it is. All you have to do is be able to extract the information from your application canvas URL. If your canvas URL is something like this:
https://apps.facebook.com/ImadBakir
Then you could place some more info in there, like this:
https://apps.facebook.com/ImadBakir?photo_id=123
Users will share that link and now in your application, you can parse that photo_id parameter and make the needed HTML changes to display the correct image inside your iframe as the page and application loads.
With regard to parsing the the URL parameters, assuming you'll be doing it with JavaScript, you can read more about it in this post:
How can I get query string values in JavaScript?

Like Box ('Could not retrieve the specified page. Please verify correct href was passed in.')

I need some information, why like box frame not working: 'Could not retrieve the specified page. Please verify correct href was passed in.'. I`m testing this href in http://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug - it says correct answer, but frame not working.
In access logs for UA facebookexternalhit/1.1 always answer status 200 (and 301/302 for specific page).
example page: http://www.now.ru/item/series/comedy/Univer_222394
additional information: on some pages frame works, and some does not work
thanks.
The Facebook Like Box is really designed to use the URL for a Facebook page, not for a general Web Page. It pulls Timeline content from a fan page within Facebook.
It can be used for a Web Page if the page has defined Open Graph Meta Tags and has been Liked at least once. However, there will be no "stream" functionality. The Like-Box for a Web Page would just have functionality similar to the Facepile plugin (except that Facepile just shows you friends, and a Like-Box also shows non-friends.)
Typically, though, you would want to supply the Like-Box with a Facebook Page URL in the following format:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Facebook-Page-Name/Facebook-Page-ID
Perhaps you are intending to use a Like Button or Facepile Social Plugin instead? Either of those can accept any URL as input.

How to like / share URLs inside Facebook that contain get-parameters

We are working on a facebook-app with lots of dynamic pages. As the app is embedded in a tab on a facebook page, the urls contain a get-parameter to address the correct tab/app. We want to implement like- and send-buttons for several pages within our app, but facebook seems to dump all get-parameters from urls within facebook. As the result all like- and send-buttons point to the facebook-page itself instead of the tab.
Does anybody now any workaround? We already tried redirects via an external sefor facebook urls only.rver but facebook seems to evaluate the links on click of the like-/send-button (and seems to follow all sort of redirects).
UPDATE:
Here is an example of a problematic url:
https://www.facebook.com/smartmobil.de?sk=app_171502639574871
UPDATE:
The problem seems to be independant of url get-parameters. It seems that the like-button does not work with any url starting with www.facebook.com
When used in a like-button everything behind the ? will be dumped. This seems to happen for facebook urls only.
Best workaround so far is to point your like buttons at external (non-facebook canvas) urls.
To make this work, you need to do some conditional redirecting to get the user back into your canvas URL. You can either use a client side javascript redirect:
<script>
window.location = 'http://apps.facebook.com/yourcanvasname/foo/bar';
</script>
Or you can do a server side redirect based on the useragent string. Basically, if the useragent contains 'facebookexternalhit' then render a basic HTML page containing OG tags, if not, redirect to the canvas URL.
Doing this means the Facebook sharescraper/linter won't follow any redirects back to the canvas URL, but any user that arrives at your URL will get back to Canvas.
i'm too searching for a solution to control the custom page tab's content through a get parameter (app_data). I still don't have a solution but here at least the reason why all www.facebook.com links are srtiped out of get params. Here at bottom the developer explains why.
Unfortunately I don't think what you are trying to do is possible. Posting a like programmatically requires you to specify a Facebook content ID or alias. This won't work for you because tabs to not seem to have an exposed content ID of their own, and instead use the Page's content ID with an additional parameter which you can't use with the graph.
Liking external links and other content that does not have an ID programmatically is prohibited. With an external URL, the first like of an unrecognised URL creates a new Facebook page for those likes to be represented on (which is the issue I've given up trying to fight), but presumably the presence of your Page's content ID alias (www.facebook.com/smartmobil.de) in the url is making Facebook choose you page rather than creating a new one.
The only suggestion I can think of this late at night is to target an external URL that performs a redirect via Javascript, rather than on the server, but Facebook may be wise to that too and I'm afraid I'm going to bed rather than testing it :)

Direct links to pages in Facebook iFrame application?

Is it possible to link directly to inner pages in a Facebook iFrame app?
For example, say my app lives at http://www.example.com/app. Can I have a link like http://apps.facebook.com/my_app/?id=256 which will navigate to somewhere like http://www.example.com/app/id/256 in my app that lives in the Facebook canvas?
I did a quick search around but didn't find anything, so if there's something already out there, please point me to it!
If your callback URL is set to http://fb.domain.com/ and your canvas URL to http://apps.facebook.com/domain_app/, navigating to http://apps.facebook.com/domain_app/hello will load http://fb.domain.com/hello. This holds true for querystring parameters as well.